


The White Knight is Talking Backwards

by warmommy



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: F/M, Healing, Past Abuse, Past Brainwashing, Past Rape/Non-con, Redemption, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-03-14 16:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: So, this story has dark themes as well, but it’s pretty much entirely redemption, recovery, learning to love and trust others again. Hugo to the rescue! During a particularly bad period of stormy weather, Hugo Stiglitz is out scouting for a safe place for himself and his fellow Basterds to sleep. To his delight, he finds an abandoned house, but something feels very wrong. Then, he finds the shed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnaGP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaGP/gifts).



> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!

When the wind kicked up again, leaves all around started to rustle together and swirl. A small animal darted through the trees, and, even if he were a hunter, the Maschinengewehr 42, its bandolier draped across his arm, would tear the meat into shreds, rendering it inedible. Hugo Stiglitz wished for warmer layers, but his best hope, and that of his team, as well, was to find some shelter before the worst of the storms began to hit. His clothes were still damp from the one the night before.

Lieutenant Raine was careful with the map. It was supposed to be water-resistant, but he was even more cautious of where to send his men. If there was a chance of German presence or interference, his eyes would grow even more weary, and he would look at another point.

Donny Donowitz, being an asshole to the nth degree, disobeyed Raine’s orders that they should team up and scout out section three. Instead, Donny went with Wicki and Sakowitz, and Hugo was on his own. He felt unformed wisps of anger melding with those of disappointment like twin plumes of smoke in his mind, but did not examine them. His current duties were far more important.

There was much more light coming from up ahead, which meant a clearing, which possibly meant a domicile or structure that wasn’t too derelict to help them weather the rainstorms and the wind. To his luck and relief, after a few hundred yards, he did find what looked to be an abandoned cottage, but his feet planted themselves to the outer edge of the clearing. Something was not right.

The roof had a rough patch job and mismatched shingles in some places. At some point, and probably recently, someone had come along and decided to make this home, at least temporarily. It appeared almost as if there were a vegetable garden towards the rear of the house, although he couldn’t tell what condition it was in, if it had been let overgrown for years. Further back, there was an outbuilding of some kind, maybe a tool shed or a smoker. Wild grasses. The majestic rustle of the leaves on that peach tree someone had planted long ago.

Paint was chipped or stripped, so perhaps no one had truly made it home again. Hugo took several moments to make this judgment call, but moved forward. If the house was unoccupied, it could actually turn into a base, of sorts, for them to bunker down when crossing through this area during later missions.

The interior proved to him almost immediately that someone else was at least squatting here. The inside was in a similar state of disrepair to the exterior, but everything was…so strangely  _clean_. Tidy. Neat. He was on alert, again. Nazis were just as likely to take advantage of abandoned properties for shelter as Basterds. He moved quietly through the large room that made up most of the first floor. There were boxes of unused candles all around, as well as half-spent ones on sticks, in jars, everywhere. A box of five thousand matches, a good portion of which already expended, rested on a lower shelf. There were books, most of them French, but some titles were in English, some in German, some even in Russian and Polish. A desk was pushed into the corner, and it was locked.

The next room was a kitchen with sunny curtains hanging over the window above the sink. The colour was too vibrant, unfaded. There was folded laundry in a basket by the bay window. Men’s shirts, but…a dress? A very old dress, mended again and again, worn paper thin in some areas. Hugo unfolded it. The skirt was in worse condition. He laid it over the back of one of the chairs and went to get one of the matches from the other room. Lighting a cigarette, he stared at the dress, an icy discomfort swallowing around the edges of him. He glanced back at the basket. There were no other dresses.

It was then that Hugo made up his mind that there were no Nazis at this place, but he still did not completely understand, could not piece together all of his misgivings into a proper vision of what was going on in this place. On the table, there were a few apples in a bowl. He took one and went upstairs. The staircase had been reinforced, and some had been replaced altogether. There was a runner rug along the hallway, and something about it, its redness, its tread, the places where it was worn…something that made the place seem haunted. Not by ghosts, that would be ridiculous, but…he was very hesitant to look inside the rooms.

It all seemed like a grim fairytale, whispered him to the dark many, many years before, the sort that would have him laid awake on his cot the entire night, staring, watching for any violent shadows.

Except now, he was grown. An adult. An adult with angry machine gun, a grudge full of bullets, and  _no_ , he did not have to be afraid.

The last room he swept was obviously the most lived-in. The bed linens were clean and starched, the bed made with more precision than ever demanded of him in the Wehrmacht. The curtains were the same pattern as the ones he had seen down in the kitchen, but a dusty sort of blue that reminded him of his own clothes. There was not a single thing out of place, but it still held the presence of others. The only odd thing he saw was a tiny rectangle of carpet placed on the floor near the left side of the bed. Hugo stared at it, his fingers still testing the curves in the bureau’s wood.

With a disconcerted, agitated sigh, he looked out the perfectly spot-free window and got full view of that quite large shed.

Hugo practically ran down the stairs and exited the house through the door at the back of the kitchen and strode with confidence towards the entrance to the old wooden shed.

When he was halfway there, he heard the first noise, and he pulled his MG from his back and flicked the safety cover. “Wer sind Sie?” he shouted. His heart was racing, but he needed for this to end, this mystery, this cramp inside of his mind. “Wohnen Sie hier?”

Then there was something else, something metal, something that scraped.

“Ich bin bewaffnet,” he warned. “Raus aus dem Gebäude.”

Hugo rammed the stock of his gun against the door, but it didn’t need any force. It creaked right open on rusty hinges. A slice of light poured in from behind him, and he caught movement in the corner, and a high-pitched sound.

He frowned, advancing upon whoever was trying to hide. “Raus aus dem Gebäude. Jetzt.”

Crying. Soft, percussive, definitely female.

“Do you understand me? Come out of the building now. I’m not here to hurt you. I’ll explain what you need to know when you come out.”

Now it was just annoying–some damn French farmer’s daughter or wife, home alone, probably saw him coming and escaped out the backdoor to hide. It happened sometimes, and he was no good at dealing with them. Wicki was the only one with any real knowledge of the French language, and in any ordinary circumstances at all, any one of them would be better with people skills.

Before he could open his mouth again, he heard something he’d heard a thousand times before, an unmistakable, mean clinking that made his back tense. He reached back without looking to shove the door open further, allowing in more light. In the dimness, he could see her.

Hugo flicked the safety cover back on and moved quickly to where she was. “English? Deutsch? Français? Fraulein?”

He could see almost up to her hip, with the way that she was sitting. Her face to her knees, one hand awkwardly covering part of her thigh. Dark hair, tangled. She was so thin.

“Was soll der Scheiß?” Hugo whispered. Her arms were chained to an elaborate rig above her head, allowing for some movement, but not much. “English? Deutsch? Français?”

The second he was close enough to touch her, her entire body started to shake. She was trying to make herself appear smaller, as if that were possible, as if she could just disappear.

She wasn’t begging. Just crying into a dress in worse shape than the one he’d seen inside the house. Her hand slipped on her thigh and he could see just a little bit of wounded flesh.

“I don’t speak French, but I speak English. I have a friend who speaks French, but he isn’t here. What is your name? Wie heißen Sie? Comment t'appelles-tu?” He put his gun aside and slid it away. “It’s okay. What’s that on your leg?”

Utivich. He needed Utivich, right away–he wasn’t supposed to use flares, though, only if it were life and death, but he wasn’t sure that was the case, just yet. If goddamn Donny had done his job the way Aldo had instructed, this wouldn’t be a problem, the dumb, loud bastard could have gone back for him.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Hugo knew that was a lie, flat-off, but he needed to at least hope to sound somewhat comforting. This was…

Well, even he had never seen anything like it.

“I want to take you out of here,” he said slowly, as if that would help her understand a language she didn’t know. He extended his hand, but that was a mistake, so he placed it on his knee, crouching a few feet away from her. “I look scarier than I am. You must be very cold. Let me give you this.” Hugo pulled off his jacket and draped it over her, effectively hiding and warming her. “Oh shit, that’s my old uniform…I am German, but I’m not a Nazi. Is that what you’re afraid of? Did a Nazi chain you up in here? Are you Jewish?”

Once she formed a tight little ball, she quit making sound whatsoever.

Her thigh was streaked with red. Infection. Hugo pulled her hand away by the bony wrist and got his answer.

Just slightly smaller than his palm, there was a Star of David burned into her skin. She’d been branded.

Burning with his own anger, Hugo pushed her dark, tangled hair away from her ear and leaned closer. “Show or tell me how to get you out of this place and I will take you away and no one will do this to you again.”

Several attempts more proved to him that words were useless. She was either incapable of understanding either language that he spoke or ignoring him, but really, why shouldn’t she? He’d hardly ever even seen mice this afraid of cats, before. She was fearing for her very life from the great, big Nazi that had come at her with a machine gun where she was chained to the wall of a shed.

Hugo began to look around this mad prison–it was a tool shed of some sort, wasn’t it? Where were all the fucking tools? What he needed was a pair of bolt cutters. Then, he remembered the ax leaning against the water pump outside. He touched her slim shoulder. “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t be afraid. Or, any more afraid than you already are. We’ll sort this. Wait.”

It was the only thing that was locked in the entire house. Hugo smashed the desk open, splintering the wood. Surely, there was something of use inside. For the time being, however, he was shouting, and he knew it; Hugo wished more than anything that this was the body of whatever person had done WHO KNEW WHAT to that terrified woman–and then actually CHAINED her, like an animal. If he were going to chain her, if he had to do something so sick and vile, could he not have done so inside the house, where she was far less likely to die of exposure?

By the time Hugo stopped swinging the ax, a huge knot felt as though it had formed between his shoulder blades. He was sweating, and his jaw hurt from immense tension. There were papers everywhere, but he didn’t stop to look at them–yet. They might prove useful, in some way, later on, when he–God, what the fuck was he even going to do? How could he convince someone who did not want him near that she needed him?

He quit thinking of how and focused on what he would need to do as he rifled though a madman’s desk. Outside, the only sound was thunder, she wasn’t screaming to anyone for help, and the humid afternoon was starting to cool and dim. He needed to free her from her bonds, quickly as he could, bring her in, find clothes that would actually cover her (he couldn’t imagine that having so much of herself exposed to him was a good feeling), give her water, food (he had two rations packs in his bag, she could eat all of it, probably), figure out what language she spoke (if she spoke at all)…

He picked up something he recognised as a snuff box, thanks to Aldo, and felt the heaviness to it right away. He shook it and it rattled. The key looked as heavy and iron as the chains, and what the fuck else could it be?

She had unfurled from her position, but quickly withdrew again upon seeing him. The rain began to pelt down on the sodden grass, and, by god, he was going to get this woman wrapped in thick towels and blankets and quilts and put her in one of those beds and guard her all night so that she could get at least one restful night of sleep in who fucking knew how long.

“I’m back,” he said uselessly, kneeling beside her again. He felt it important that he follow through with what he said, and that it should be reinforced with her that he would. She was still while he unlocked the homemade cuffs and did not move at all when he tossed them aside. Hugo pulled her arms though his jacket and lifted her chin so she’d have to face him. Her eyes were so big, and so free from fear, now. So free from anything. Or, not free. Caged in nothingness. Without a single other thought of what he ought to do, Hugo lifted her up as carefully as he possibly could. “Ja, I understand that.”

She weighed next to nothing, but he still moved cautiously through the mud in the backyard. He knew his mates were out there somewhere, and he hoped that they had managed to find someplace safe for the night. They would understand, wouldn’t they?

There was not a one of them that would have cruelly left her there on her own, with no protection? Chained or not, at any moment, whoever had done this would come back, and, oh, he could not wait to get his hands around that neck and snap it.

There was an old rug in front of the fireplace, which had been cleaned, recently, and that was where he sat her down. There was enough dry wood stacked beside it to last for days, which was good, and he had a strong one roaring as quick as he could. Turning back to her, he peeled his jacket off of her and hung it on the arm of a chair to dry. He pressed down on her shoulder to indicate that she should stay and wait for him, but, instead, she set her eyes on his again and sank down onto the rug, her legs opening slightly.

Oh, God.

Hugo stood up straight and said no in every language he could mutter, and he was ashamed of how fast his feet carried him up the stairs. Hugo stopped at the top and pressed his palms hard into his face. What in the hell was happening? What had happened here? He knew that all of these things happened to people, to women especially, in war, especially–but  _everything_? And for how fucking long?

He pulled back the starched sheets on the largest bed to prepare it for her, then went through the chest of drawers to see if there were suitable clothes for her. Nothing. All men’s clothes. Were those two dresses really all that she had? He grabbed angrily at a stack of towels and went into the next room. Nothing for her there, either, but there were more blankets, and a thick bathrobe. He raced back downstairs, and she’d hardly moved at all. She was small, but her legs were long, and the dress she’d probably had for years came halfway up her thighs, now.

Hugo passed her the towels and robe, hoping she understood. “Go get clean, I’m getting you clothes and food. Take your time.” He gave her the slightest little push and she went without ever looking back at him, the soft things in her arms, her damp feet slapping lightly against the floor.

The best he could do so far was a big, grey, cable-knitted sweater that would reach her knees. When he stepped into the kitchen, she was already there, smoothing her clean dress over her clean skin. She stood very still and waited. With a start, Hugo moved closer and pulled the sweater over her head. It was made of thick, spun fibre, and she was obedient, allowed him to help dress her.

“You look like someone new already,” he said, and it was at least partly true. He pushed her into a chair at the kitchen table, and he noted mentally that he was becoming too accustomed to moving her around, like a doll. He was mostly certain that she could not understand him, though, unless he was literally pushing her to where he wanted her to go or placed her there himself. It felt wrong, very wrong, but what else could he do, for now?

Hugo pressed down on her shoulder and went to grab his bag from where he’d left it by the front door. He changed into a different shirt and pants before coming back into the room with those godawful field rations (so many things he would never understand about Americans) and the little pack of first aid materials Utivich had given him since he would up hurt all the fucking time. He opened some of the boxes for her and pointed at them, then knelt beside her and tapped her knee very gently a few times to let her know he was going to look at the brand on her thigh. He at least hoped that it was communicated.

She’d done a good job at cleaning the wound when she’d bathed, and he spoke to her softly, telling her that she’d done well. She was eating quietly, which was so relieving–he’d feared he’d have to force-feed her, or something, to keep her from keeling over right in front of him. Her quadriceps tensed and relaxed under his hands, but no further movement. She didn’t like him touching her, but was clearly used to that not mattering very much, to someone.

“I’m not going to do this more than I have to,” Hugo explained, disinfecting the wound. “This is horrible, what they did. People from my country have done unthinkable, unforgivable things to the Jews. I don’t hurt Jewish people, I help them. I try to, I try my best.”

All too suddenly, he felt so tired. The wrongness and hopelessness and helplessness that made up this evil place and the fear still emanating from the woman he’d done his very best for coiled around him like powerful snakes. Hugo stood and went into the other room, taking clean sheets of paper from the desk and a pencil. She hadn’t made a peep, perhaps she was simply mute?

He knew that she was watching every move he made carefully. He saw small movements another person likely wouldn’t notice. A tremble in her posture when he approached again. Her knees drawing together under the table. Hugo sat down in another chair and scrawled his name in big, block letters.

HUGO.

He looked at her, caught her silvery-blue eyes, then looked back at the page and drew an arrow to himself. Next he drew a question mark and an arrow pointing at her, put the pencil down, and pushed the paper to her. After a few moments of carefully chewing on a piece of dried beef, she picked up the pencil, causing a whirl of excitement inside of him.

0.

He couldn’t tell at first if it was a letter or numeral, but then she drew a slash through it. Nothing. Her name was nothing, it did not exist.

He tried not to frown. When she handed the pencil directly to him, he circled his name.

He  _saw_  her lips move, and, although there was no sound, he  _knew_  she had ‘said’ his name. He couldn’t help smiling at her.

What else could he learn this way?

On his side of the page, he wrote 32.

On hers, she wrote 21/22/23(?).

He looked down at his arms, folded on the table. “I think I’m thirty-two. I don’t really know, either.”

She never responded to anything else he wrote, so he pushed the paper aside and set out a fresh piece.

“I need to call you something. You know my name, you said it. You need your own name.” He tried again not to frown when she stared just as blankly as before, and he began aimlessly scrawling feminine and masculine names both onto the page.

ALMA  
AMIRA  
DANIEL  
EDEN  
EFRAIM  
GIDEON  
HADASSAH   
JUDITH  
MIRIAM  
NAOMI  
RACHEL  
SENDER  
URI  
WOLF  
YAEL

With what could be taken as excitement, she took the pencil away from him and drew a circle around NAOMI.

“Naomi.” He smiled again. If that was what she would like to be called, that was wonderful to him. She’d chosen. He drew an arrow and another question mark at her, and she nodded.

That was enough to expect for one night. Naomi pushed food at him constantly, but he shook his head until she’d at least eaten half. She was far more excited to drink water than to eat, and he made sure she had plenty available at all times.

She was drawing in front of the fire when he awoke. Hugo sat up quickly, startling her. He hadn’t even known he’d fallen asleep.

“Naomi?” He stretched, then pointed at the paper she had turned over. One of her fingers looked dislocated, but he would probably do more harm than good if he tried to fix it. Somehow, the universe would send him Utivich. “What’ve you got?”

Lines began to appear on her forehead, so he shook his head heavily.

“You can do what you want with as much paper as you want. What are you doing? Are you writing?”

Hugo nearly gasped aloud when he picked it up from the rug. It was almost like a photograph. Not nearly so detailed, but accurate, he knew, of what he must’ve looked like, slouched over in the chair. “Impressive. You’re talented.”

He gave it back to her, and she folded it, slipping it up the sleeve of the sweater.

Everything she did that wasn’t out of complete and utter fear of him made him grin. He wouldn’t be able to stay awake, though, and who even knew when the last time she slept was? She wouldn’t answer him, even if she could, so Hugo stood and reached for her hand, looking directly into her eyes until she took it and he could pull her to stand. He directed her to and up the stairs and she went the rest of the way to the largest bedroom.

Hugo pulled his sidearm from its holster and set it on the chest close to the armchair. Naomi looked at it warily. “It’s not for you.” Hugo stepped just a bit closer to where she stood at the left side of the bed and ruffled the sweater around her shoulder. “It’s for anybody that wants to hurt you. I’ll blow their heads clean off their necks. Go, get comfortable.” He pushed her shoulder again, gently.

Naomi got down on her knees on that odd rectangle of carpet that he’d noticed earlier that day, and, if he hadn’t been so damn exhausted, it would have struck him a lot sooner, what she was doing. Her hands were undoing his zipper when he shoved her away, alarmed.

“Nein!” Hugo was shocked and took a stumbled step backward. She was still kneeling on the carpet piece, her arms held up in front of herself. “Naomi, I’m sorry–I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Already, though, he knew it was nearly pointless to say and wouldn’t make her budge. He hated picking her up again because all of her most tenuous trust in him was gone, and she was shaking like a little leaf. Hugo put her on the centre of the bed and drew the blankets up over her, even tucked her in. Shaking his head, he yawned and rubbed his eye.

Still stepping backward, he sank into the armchair and sighed heavily. Though bundled up on the bed, Naomi was unmoving, unblinking.

“You don’t believe me, but you haven’t got to be afraid of me. I’m only going to take care of you until I can take you someplace safer for you. I’ll figure that out. Whoever the fuck did this, if it’s one man or twenty, I don’t care, I’m going to make them all suffer to their last bleeding moment on this earth.” Hugo rolled his head back and yawned again. “You don’t ever have to do anything of the sort, ever again. Not for me, not for anyone.”

A thought crossed him before he fell asleep in the dark room. He kept awake, forcing himself to, long enough to at least observe Naomi closing her eyes and breathing evenly. Since when had he believed in safety? It didn’t matter, he shoved the thought far away. Safety may or may not exist for HIM, but it most certainly did for  _her_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and more on my Tumblr, @vegetatargaryen.

He woke himself up with the feeling of woodgrain against his fingertips, and he realised it was the gun he spent most of his waking hours holding. Hugo Stiglitz blinked at pale pink sunrise coming through quiet blue curtains, and his eyes fell on a large, empty bed. It took another two or three seconds for him to jerk upright and tumble out of the chair in the corner of the room.

How could he have missed her leaving?

His boots thundered down the stairs rapidly, and he was calling the name she had chosen for herself. Of course, he'd been so fucking stupid, speaking to her in languages she did not understand, scaring her so badly the night before. He hadn't meant to, he reasoned with himself over and over in the few moments it took to get downstairs.

It no longer rained, but, if she had gone out, if she had left in attempt to escape, she was out in the damp with hardly any clothes on and probably no shoes. He had to find her, and quickly, before she became ill--her health was so bad, it would take so little to harm her. He repeated her name, the name she'd at least chosen or herself, but, of course, received no response.

"Naomi?" he called again. Now that he was downstairs, though, he saw that the clothes he'd left to dry by the fire were no longer there, and he could smell. . .baking bread? He stepped into the kitchen and could see, through the window, Naomi in her sweater, carrying a pail of water from the pump to the door. He opened it for her. "I was worried about you. I thought you'd run off."

Naomi looked at him with wide, so blue as to almost be violet eyes and did not slosh a single drop of water out of her bucket. She set it aside, and he noticed on a nearby rack his clothes had been cleaned and were drying. When he looked at Naomi again, she had put on mitts, and pulled a loaf of bread from the oven. She had butter, too, from somewhere, on the table with fruit, and she sliced the bread thickly and set a few pieces on a plate in front of the chair he'd sat in last night.

Hugo watched her do all of this, and now she was looking at him. Not directly, more looking at his neck and chest region, her chin down, her sleeves tucked over her hands, folded neatly in front of herself. He could see she wanted him to sit, to eat, so he lowered down onto the chair in a sort of daze. Before he'd even awoke, she'd done so much for him. No one in his life had ever cooked breakfast just for him, before. It. . .it was one of the best days of his life, even with the fear, the panic--when had those things ever meant  _anything_ , if he was the one feeling them?

He nodded once, imperceptibly, to himself, and gestured at the table. "Naomi. Come here." He made a beckoning gesture.

She stepped closer to him silently, with some apprehension, but it was vacant of something that had been there before, something Hugo could not place. He smeared butter onto bread and gave it to her. "Eat, Naomi." He sat very pointedly still and did not touch a bit of food, waiting for her, making it clear that he waited for her.

She did something else unexpected, now, and sat on his knee. Before he could so much as tense and gently rebuke her, Naomi had bitten into the hot, buttery bread, and he could feel her legs moving, her feet tapping with slow rhythm.

Seeing Naomi eat readily, where he had put much effort into getting her to eat the night before, and sitting so peacefully, even if she really  _shouldn’t_  take a seat in his lap, touched Hugo as one of the most precious things he'd ever witnessed in his life. He noticed she had almost finished her bread and hastily spread butter on another and passed it to her.

The bitter truth was not hidden from him. He knew, very well, that she was either trying to appease him so as to keep him from being violent or raping her, or she was trying to convince him to stay, to be her new master and to chase away the old one.

After eating a bit of bread himself, and God, was it  _good_ , Hugo began to speak, quietly. He told her that this was something he would repay her for, that she should take care of herself, not him. He told her she was supposed to devote herself to her freedom now, not devote herself to him, and certainly not for the reasons she had chosen.

Naomi, of course, went on as she was, sitting in his lap, nibbling on bread, as though she could not hear him at all. No matter, he thought. It did not matter how he loved this feeling of welcome and belonging, it was not real. It was make-believe by a severely traumatised and abused young woman, breathtakingly simple and sweet, but, to its core, wrong. His heart raced, and he wanted to find the one who had done these things, forced her to live in this way for so long. Hugo wanted, more than anything, than to climb into a time machine, go into her past, and save her like some sort of knight. Since he could not do that, he concluded, he would do the best and right things for Naomi. Find her a safe, warm place. Murder her captor.

She ate an apple more quietly than anyone ever had, he was sure, and he ate whatever he wanted,  _hungry_ , all of a sudden, and everything was damn delicious. When she was done eating, he was far from through, but Naomi made no move to leave his lap. He heard the softest sigh of contentment that he could hardly believe came from her. It was stunning, the most audible sound she'd made in his presence. What was more, she made herself comfortable. Naomi turned how she was sitting so that she could lean against his chest. He felt her lips touch his jaw, felt her arm around his shoulder, and he was going to personally protect this woman until the day he died.

Without ever hearing the sound of her voice, without knowing if he ever would, Hugo Stiglitz was ruined for life, wrapped around this lovely, intelligent creature's little finger.

For the sake of propriety, Hugo was prompt to stand and place her back on her own two feet. Naomi appeared unperturbed, just busied her hands with clearing away the table, washing plates, walking with bare feet over wooden floors smoothed by years and years of wear. He felt awkward to stand on his own by the chair he'd sat in, hardly moving, letting her flurry of activity buzz all around him. Hugo remembered all those scattered papers from the desk that he had smashed apart the day before.

Entering the room where it was kept, Hugo noticed, now, how Naomi had cleared away the splintered wood and neatly arranged the papers in stacks on what remained of the desk's surface. He opened his mouth and almost called her name, a spark in him, because the  _way_  she had arranged the papers seemed to have  _meaning_  of some kind. He closed it, though. Whatever he asked, she would have no answer. He stared at them, rather, for a long time, drew closer, and tried to discern the pattern. Were they stacked by language? Her captor was clearly a polyglot of some kind.

He heard her ascend the stairs while his back was turned and assumed she was simply going through some ritual of household chores. That entered his subroutines of thought, what went beneath his conscious mind. How could he stop her? How could he show her to simply  _be_ , when he wasn't sure how to do that himself? Half an hour passed, and the arrangement of papers was lost on him. Frustrated, he took some of them with him into the kitchen with a stack of the plain white paper he and Naomi had used to communicate so far, ready to take notes on whatever pieces he could find, hoping to piece them together.

Hugo heard Naomi come to sit down at the table with him, but some time passed before he looked up from what he was reading. Most of it was hand typed pages streaming seamlessly through both language and consciousness. He recognised the word 'girl' in more languages than he could speak, and knew soon in that they referred to Naomi. He wrote the word in a special way, too, making it stand out all the more: gIRl, dZiewczYna, mädCHEn, odd typography, but the same, every time, and, although it told him nothing more of her than what this mad creature wrote of her, it still felt like a huge leap.

Her captor was, as suspected, a masochist. He seemed to think that she was some sort of demon queen, that what he did to her, enslaving her, abusing her physically, mentally, and sexually, gave him her 'powers'. That was the most Hugo could tell, from these seemingly endless pages. Hugo was able to piece together the disturbing details of how the man believed Naomi's screams of pain where the moans of pleasure from the demon within her. His writing grew increasingly sexually charged the more he described hurting Naomi, how he would stop many times through beating her to 'engage in the covenant of pleasure with the demon'.

A few hours passed of his obsessive reading before he came to--something. A detailed description of an event more horrid than he felt that he could stomach, and he had done. . .many things. His hands shook, as he read, his eyes widened every other sentence--the  _violence_. . .How it was described that her human bone had been crushed, and she 'refused' to prove to him that she, demon queen, could get up and walk anyway. He'd stood, right at the backdoor that Hugo himself had come and gone through many times, and watched 'gIRl' lie in the mud and rain and crawl as slowly as the body he'd broken would allow. Described it as a process taking more than a day and a half, and he'd. .  .

Hugo let some of the pages fall from his hands. The rains still had not picked up again, but it was raining to him, regardless. He lit a cigarette and stared at the black and white pages spread out in front of him, smoking, staring until the colours blurred into grey. This man had watched her suffer so much and grown so aroused by her suffering, by the way that she was dying, attempting to move from the shed to the backdoor, that he'd gone out multiple times, as described, to fuck her out there in the mud.

The code stamped at the top of the page was simple enough, a Julian date, reaching back  _years_  before. Hugo couldn't even be sure how young Naomi had been when this unspeakable event had taken place. All of it, all of it so horrible, but  _that_. . .

She was sitting just across from him, he realised. He'd known  _Naomi_  sat across from him, but this was not just Naomi, but gIRl, not a skinny, cowering thing, but the woman who could not be killed, could not be conquered. There she sat, as wrapped up in her own task as he had been his. She had scissors, a look of concentration, pins, needles, thread, and men's shirts he recognised from the drawers upstairs and she had made, he saw now, dresses. She had made dresses from her captor's clothes, crafted something new and clever for  _herself_.

Hugo's arm fell against the table with a thud and he took her hand so gently in his and just gazed at her. He'd said she'd needed clothes, and here she was making them. He pushed away the thoughts that were sensible, that she was still obeying orders rather than working on her own volition. She wasn't so much as trembling, either, though he believed she was still afraid. Being afraid was her nature. Being afraid was okay, because he would show her no reason to fear.

"It's okay." He eased his thumb over her knuckles. "It's okay."

Hugo put away the madman's diary and asked through gestures about the dresses. She was so skilled with every stitch, and, underneath her motions of utility, pointing out the designs she had implemented, he could  _feel_  her excitement. Other than the sweater, they were, assuredly, the only new things she'd had to wear since probably before her memory was broken. She favoured the green one, touched it carefully, kept it tucked against herself, like she was afraid it would be taken from her. Hugo, with his arm around Naomi, pulled her just a touch closer, kissed the side of her head.

"Go and put it on," he said, making simple motions of dressing, and Naomi smiled at him again, as she had before, and she moved with such enthusiasm to a place of privacy. He couldn't stop grinning when she came back downstairs. "Wow. Look at you. Green is your colour. You look beautiful, sweet Naomi."


End file.
